Tunisia Faces Protests After Opposition Figure Killed

Protesters escort the body of assassinated Tunisian opposition politician Muhammad Brahmi in Tunis on July 25.

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Tunisia Faces Protests After Opposition Figure Killed

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Tunisia's interior minister says that secular opposition politician Muhammad Brahmi was killed with the same gun that was used to kill his party's leader six months earlier.

Lotfi Ben Jeddou told reporters on July 26 that "the same 9 millimeter automatic weapon" that killed Brahmi one day earlier also killed Chokri Belaid in February.

He named Boubacar Hakim, an alleged Islamist extremist, as the main suspect, in both killings.

Brahmi, a member of the Arab nationalist Popular Front party, was a strong critic of the Islamist ruling party, Ennahda.

The statement came as Tunisia braced for more protests on July 26 after flights were canceled and banks and shops were closed.

Secular opposition parties and the country's largest trade union have called for street rallies to protest the July 25 killing of Brahmi.

The rallies also aim to topple the government led by Ennahda.

The assassination prompted thousands to protest on July 25 outside the Interior Ministry in Tunis and in the central city of Sidi Bouzid, where Brahmi was born.

Protesters also set fire to Ennahda's offices in a nearby town.

Feriel, a Tunisian woman who joined the protests outside the Interior Ministry, spoke to Reuters about the political violence in the country.

"This is the second assassination that Tunisia has seen in the past six months," she said. "If we have a murder every half a year, this will be worse even than the Iranian scenario."

The assassination of secular opposition politician Chokri Belaid in February ignited the worst violence in Tunisia since the overthrow of autocratic President Zine el-Abidine ben Ali in 2011. The government has blamed Belaid's killing on Islamist extremists.

Like many of the demonstrators in Tunis and elsewhere, Feriel expressed concerns that Brahmi will not be the last opposition politician to be killed.

With reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP

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